Exiled: Keeper of the City Read online

  Reswen spent a goodly while with Krruth at one or another of the tubes,’ identifying the voices his people had been listening to, and describing the owners. Krruth stood beside him, making no notes; he never needed them, and would pass the information on faultlessly to his people. Only once during the process did Reswen pause, as a Silvery voice way above on the ground floor spoke up and laughed, asking for more wine. “Deshahl,” said Krruth,

  “Blue eyes,” Reswen said. “Pale, darkening at the points.”

  “Rare, very rare,” Krruth said. “Be a lot of lads fighting for her peephole, I should say.”

  Reswen looked askance at Krruth, who gazed back, perfectly grave and apparently without a trace of a salacious thought on his mind. I should eat more breakfast in this weather, Reswen thought. I’m becoming lightheaded. Or lightminded. “I dare say,” he said aloud. “As long as they don’t forget to watch everyone else as well.”

  He turned to go. “I’ve got the formal reception this evening,” he said. “I’ll leave an outline for you of anything interesting that our mrem should listen for.”

  “Very well, sir,” Krruth said, and saluted informally. “Mind the wine, now.”

  “I will,” Reswen said, but his mind was not on wine as he left, unless wine is blue.

  •

  She had not bothered to go back to her body for a long time. For one of a lesser talent, that would have been dangerous. Indeed, to most of her kind who worked out of the physical body, it was a constant danger. The less physical body one wore in the overworld always seemed somehow preferable to the body one wore in the world. Perhaps it was because one’s perfections stood out there, where in the physical body they were hidden. Or at least, the aspects of one that one perceived as one’s perfections, stood out. She had been shocked, at home, to meet some of her superiors—great lords and wizards, terrible in their power and beauty in the overworld, splendors and glories of scale and flame—to find that they were actually crabbed and ugly creatures. Or sometimes she found that they were utterly ordinary-looking; that was somehow even worse.

  Though she had to admit that it was a novice’s mistake, to look at the physical body and assume that what it looked like accurately indicated what was actually so. One who did so much work outside of essh’haaath, the Hardest Skin, the skin that took longest to cast, should certainly know better.

  Even more laughable, though, she had found those of her kind who sought, in the overworld, to present themselves as unusually quick or clever or subtle. One might fool oneself with such seemings, but others were not confused. The overworld revealed the truth. She had sometimes wondered how she looked to others, and had shuddered at the thought that the way she perceived herself might be other than the truth.

  She hissed at herself now, softly, in mild irritation, and turned her mind back to her business. This place was not conducive to quiet work, this hive of mucky little passions and strifes. She had spent the last few days and nights slipping through its sordid streets, looking in the windows of houses and souls, seeking her enemies, and her allies. They were many, though none of them knew themselves for such as yet.

  She lay in the midst of one street now. The weak sun of this place beat on her, pale shadow that it was of the sun of her home, or the true bright sun of the parts of the overworld that her kind called their own. She basked in that light, poor as it was, and watched with cool pleasure as the creatures walked through where her immaterial body lay. Actually, not many of them walked through; she got a certain wicked delight at watching how many of them shied away from the center of the street, as if something chill was there, something that watched them. And so there was, but poor pitiful things, they had no power to truly perceive what caused their fear. All around, the walks and the sides of the road were squeezed full of furry vermin, doing their businesses, but few of them were so bold as to go down the middle of the streets. Burden-beasts shied when they discovered her presence, and tried to flee. She watched with slow amusement as their pur-blind masters beat them toward her, and sometimes succeeded in driving them through where she “lay,” and sometimes failed, causing the beasts to bolt and trample the passersby.

  A good long while she lay there, under that firefly sun, looking into their faces to see if they had any. They did not. One and all, they wore the same hectic expressions: the idiot smile, the look of fear. Thought did not show in those faces. There was nothing on them but fur, and their eyes were not opaque and tantalizing like those of her own people, but pallid, shallow, and clear, like water. She hissed softly in loathing. At least water did not run down the center of this street, as it did down so many others. But it ran in the eyes of the passersby, and she detested the sight of it. Water was a curse on the world, and these creatures were too familiar with it. Fire, that was what mattered. Fire, and blood. At least some of them knew about that.

  She rose up from where she lay, causing another small stampede down at the end of the street. There were parts of this city—one might as well call it that, having no better name, though it was a poor place—parts of this city which were of little use to her; the vermin there were too contented. But in the stews, in the poor streets where filth ran in the gutters, and among the high houses on the hill, where everything was stone and greenery, there her prey walked and plotted, and did her will without knowing it.

  She reached out with her mind and laid her will upon the overworld, and in a swirl of pale fire, she was where she desired to be. The street was broad and shaded with great trees. Its cobbles and the marble walks were swept clean; the great buildings rose up on either side, many-windowed, terraced, still. Few vermin walked here, and those that did went hastily, and walked around her without even seeming to give the matter thought. They are used to giving way to their betters, she thought with a long slow smile, and her tongue flickered in amusement.

  She glided forward to lie in the courtyard of the great building that lay at the end of the street. Great for these creatures, at least. She thought of the Halls of the Lords, back in her own land, the great glittering caves so huge that a dragon could fly in them and not cramp its wings, and the comparison between that grandeur and this hovel was laughable. Still, here her slaves lay. Here questions were being asked, and the answers would deliver this city into her claws. She reached out with her will, just for pleasure’s sake, and threaded her thought down through the place, letting her slaves feel the fear of her, the presence of something that watched, though they did not know—most of them—that she existed at all. She felt their shivers, in what was for them a hot day; felt them, and rejoiced.

  Other shivers answered the pressure of her will, and in those too she rejoiced, and her tongue flickered again in token of her hunger. Without even reaching out her mind she could feel them, the vermin buried under the house outside which she lay: the listening minds, thinking themselves so secure in their little lair. Well, they were not as secure as they thought; one of her slaves had already seen to that. The buried listeners would do her will as well, sooner or later. She would find that most amusing. She looked forward to the taste of their horror and despair on the air of the overworld ... and the taste of their bodies afterwards, and as a final delicacy, their souls. She felt sure that some of them, at least, would be given her as her reward. She turned away, then, laid her will once more upon the stuff of the overworld, and the shady street gave way instantly to one of those small filthy alleys buried in the heart of the town. The buildings leaned together, and everything here was shadow instead of shade, decay instead of cool solidity. Muck lay against the houses; noisome water ran in the gutter down the middle of the street. Here no one had any choice where they walked, and every glance was furtive, every heart had the seeds of rage in it. The colors of the vermin burned far more sullen and muddy here than in the high houses. They would be easy to warp down into the soul-darkness that she needed. Greed and rage were rooted deep in almost every mind, and many of the vermin made no a
ttempt to detour around her overbody, they walked right through her with the barest shudder. She smiled again, a wide expression, showing the dreadful teeth. None of them saw, and only a few shuddered. These were indeed apt meat for her use, and later, perhaps, for her tearing. It was not meat that one would bother eating, of course. But seeing the blood flow would be delightful, and hearing the screams as she indulged herself what she was not forbidden, and burned their hearts with fire.

  Her tongue flickered the air of the overworld in pleasure. Then she paused, scenting something on that air, an annoying scent, sharp, alert. She looked about her. Here? she thought. In this puddle, this dunghill? Yet there was no mistaking it.

  For a moment anger rose in her. I was told there were none here, she thought. And how should I not have known there was one until now? How has that one been hiding from me?

  She slipped down the street slowly, tasting the air as she went. Yes, definitely, no mistaking it, that tang, that slight acridity. The slight whiff of flame. Not willingly used, not at all; that was one thing she knew about the vermin. Fire they held as an enemy, poor benighted things that they were. Probably they are afraid it will catch in their fur, she thought in amused scorn. And if it did, a cheerful sight that would be. And it would serve them right. They were barely more than the brute beasts, these things. They had somehow learned to think, to speak, to build houses, to write; how had they learned magic? And a magic different from the crude kind used by the beasts they hunted, in the wilder places? Magic! Magic was the right of the Old People, the Thinking People, her own kind. No upstart race, fur-wearing, verminous, should know anything about it, should be able to contaminate the overworld with its presence. It made her want to forget everything she had been bidden, made her want to let go right now and reduce this place to—But she calmed herself. Rage was not her way, not really. Far more entertainment was to be garnered by the slow steady pursuit, with one’s eyes fixed unwearyingly on the quarry. Let her prey know she came, let it turn and twist and try to get away, let it know fully at last that there was no escape for it, no way out, all its paltry devices laid bare. Then, then the crunch of teeth, and the blood running.

  Slowly she slipped down the narrow little street, through the shadows. By one door she stopped, seeing through its rickety wall the light she had tasted down the street. Through the wall she went, through the wattles and daub, and looked upon the small miserable creature that lay there, lost in its dreams at such a time of day, with the tiny flicker of muddy fire, burning so very low, too low to do much of anything with. The mockery of it enraged her anew, but she forced herself to find some amusement in it, that a creature so wretched should have magic, and know how little it could do with it. A nightrunner, she thought, The worst kind of vermin, but the most laughable. Know me in your dreams, little beast, little mrem. Know me, and fear. All your struggling against me will not avail you. I am here, and nothing you can do will make me go away. I am your death, little mrem. I am you city’s death. Sooner or later, she thought, I and my kind are your world’s death.

  And she laughed, and the sound of her laughter filled everything as she willed herself away to let the death begin to unfold....

  HE WOKE up in the middle of the afternoon, shaking, and stared around him. Something had been hissing. Hissing at him.

  He looked around his room, breathing hard, and tried to force himself to be calm. Nothing was here, nothing bad seemed to be happening. But the sense of impending danger, of horror, hung thick in the room. Everything otherwise seemed quite ordinary. Dust danced in a stray sunbeam forcing its way in between two boards of the wall. Outside there was the sound of voices, and through the cracks in the shut door, the same old stink forced its way.

  He breathed out and shook his head. The feeling had been growing on him for a couple of days, now, that something bad was going to happen. This sort of thing had happened to him before: The last time, it was a premonition of pain, an ache that had settled into his bones ... and four days later one of his clients had taken exception to the way one of the Games that he bet on had turned out, and had taken out the frustration on his bookmaker, since there was no one else he could attack with impunity. Lorin had limped for days, had gone about his business with eyes swollen half shut, and his tail had never completely been right again, not after the way Jath had pulled it. Lorin had not done anything, of course. There was nothing he could have done that wouldn’t have revealed him fairly quickly as what he was, and that would have meant a stake over the city gate with his head on it—or some part of him that would have hurt worse. He had gone to a lot of trouble making himself look small and harmless, a bookmaker almost too small for the city to take official note of, small enough to hide some of the takings for his own uses. And if anyone found out what those uses were, or suspected them, Lorin would have been as good as dead.

  But what he felt now made that aching of the last time look like nothing by comparison. The past three days it had been growing on him, the feeling of being watched. No, not precisely that, he thought. But of being just barely overlooked ... by something looking for me. He shook again, for a moment, as the thought brought the sound of the hissing back into his ears. Whatever was happening, the hiding, the being overlooked, was done with. Something had found him—had found the whole city. And it meant them no good at all.

  Lorin sat up on the bed and rubbed mournfully at his ears for a moment. They still hissed softly, and though it was only the sound of his own blood running, it made him think of that other hissing. He was very frightened—but what frightened him more was the thought that had started running in the background of his mind: I ought to do something.

  Like what? he demanded of himself

  No answer came, at least not right away. What could he possibly do? Any work of that kind—any of his real work—might reveal him and get him killed. On the other hand, if he did not do something, he was betraying what he was in a way that no mrem would understand. One was not born with the talent he had, and as slowly and bitterly trained in it as he had been, without responding to certain threats. That hissing—

  “Why me?” he muttered, and then hushed himself, as if someone might hear.

  No answer, of course. But usually there was none, when a foreseeing of something like this came up—some threat that was not of the body, something of the overworld, something of wizardry. One was not given the answers. One made them.

  Lorin moaned softly to himself, an unhappy little yowl. What am I supposed to do? he thought. I don’t have the materials I need, I don’t have the money ... or the skill, or the time—that’s it, I don’t have the time— There were no less than three Games today; various of his clients had bets riding on every one of them, some of them fairly substantial for this part of town. He couldn’t possibly do anything until much later. After the Games, possibly not until this evening—

  He paused. But the trail will be cold, he thought, and breathed out in annoyance. There were some facts that could not be ignored. If something out of its body had just been in here looking at him, it would have left a trail of sorts in the overworld. Or it should have, at any rate. Unless it was a wizard of considerable power ... But why would anyone like that be looking at him? Sometimes wizards did go on spirit-jaunts, traveling, just to see the great world without leaving the comfort of their homes. But that kind of immaterial journey typically burned four hours off one’s life for every hour spent in it, and no one would waste such a large piece’ of life prowling around in—admit it—a slum. No, this had to be something else.

  But why would some other wizard be looking at me?

  And what other wizard??

  That was the other problem. Niau was one of those places where mrem did not believe in wizardry ... not really. That was one of the reasons Lorin had come here, long ago, after his parents had been killed. He had had enough of wizardry, wanted nothing but to hide away from the reactions of more informed mrem, who definitely
believed in wizards, and mostly believed in killing them. Fools, Lorin thought, but the bitterness in the thought was old and dull. As if an honest mrem wizard would stoop to the kinds of things that the worms and snakes did in the old days, when they ruled— But that was exactly what too many mrem thought, and by and large, wizard-mrem survived by keeping quiet about their talents and their intentions. Lorin’s parents had not; they had paid the price. And Lorin had learned the lesson.

  But not well enough to leave well enough alone, he thought to himself, and frowned angrily at his own idiocy.

  Then he sighed. The feeling of something bad about to happen was not going to go away; he knew that perfectly well. Neither was his bad conscience, which had not stopped chiding him, more or less in his mother’s voice, since he woke up. Will you make everything that every wizardmrem has done since magic was tamed mean nothing? What use are you if not to protect your own kind?

  You died doing that, Lorin said silently to the voice.

  It made no reply, but Lorin still had a distinct sense of a maternal paw, somewhere, ready to cuff him hard about the ears, if only it had a body to do it.

  He sighed, and thought a moment, and then lay back again and closed his eyes.

  I don’t know if this is even going to work....

  But then he never did. It was always a strain, getting out of himself, no matter whether he used drugs and chants and smokes to help, or whether he did it the old-fashioned way, as his father had always insisted, and simply got out. And anyway, drugs are expensive, and chants, in this neighborhood, would get you lynched.... Therefore Lorin composed his limbs and relaxed them one by one, and then imagined his whole self to be a small glowing light at the top of his head ... and concentrated on burning his way out through the top of his skull, into what lay beyond.